


Eleven Minutes Past Midnight

by Val_Creative



Series: Kinktober/Whumptober/Goretober 2020 [18]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Adults, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood Kink, Blood and Injury, Buried Alive, Canon-Typical Violence, Claustrophobia, Comfort Sex, Developing Relationship, Explicit Language, Goretober, Hurt Jason Todd, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Kinktober, Kinktober 2020, M/M, Mild Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness, Rescue, Trapped, Vomiting, Weapons, Whump, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:48:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27091537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Creative/pseuds/Val_Creative
Summary: If Jason Todd could never see another fucking crowbar again, it would be too soon.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Bruce Wayne
Series: Kinktober/Whumptober/Goretober 2020 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949473
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51
Collections: Kinktober 2020, Whumptober 2020





	Eleven Minutes Past Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This got much longer than I expected and I am feeling the Jason Todd feels. And the Brujay. I haven't indulged in Brujay in a while. Hope you guys like this one! ❤️❤️ Especially my fellow Brujay fans! I'm glad to be writing for them again!

*

If Jason Todd could never see another _fucking_ crowbar again, it would be too soon.

One minute he was riding high, ducking through the Kane County morgue for secret sealed records and trash-talking Batman for showing up to catch him, and the next—well, Jason has a hard time recalling. Things exploded black in Jason's eyes. Painful.

He's somewhere sitting in the dark. Wooden-plank floor.

Footsteps nearby.

A goon wearing a navy-striped sweater peeks into the abandoned, dusty train-car, brandishing his crowbar at Jason. Nothing happens. He vanishes back into the night. That would explain Jason's headache and the fresh blood trickling over his eyebrow.

"Fuck," Jason murmurs, groaning and shifting himself. His pistol missing. And so are Jason's belt-knives.

More pain—running through him like _ice_ — _slender spikes_ —

Jason's wrists twist against the barbed wire holding them in place. His fingers feel liquid-hot and slick.

"Ah hell," Jason says quietly in a complaint.

It's not as bad as Joker suspending him on his tiptoes, wrapping his hands in rope, beating him senseless in the rib-cage and pancreas. But, damn it, there's no way to get out of barbed wire that _doesn't_ involve him getting shredded.

Voice drift in.

"That went well," one of the goons declares, whistling cheerfully and tossing the Red Hood helmet up in the air. By the faintest moonlight, Jason can see him. A man with an elegantly long nose. Charles Bay—a known hitman dogging for Gotham's elite.

It's a second voice, nasally high, comes into Jason's hearing.

"Where did they put The Batman?"

Somewhere far, _far_ away from Gotham, Jason hopes. Captured and drugged and shipped out to Tibet or Egypt or Moscow.

"Ehe," a third voice giggles. It's not quite a Joker-giggle but the noise sets Jason's teeth on edge. Heightens at a lick of uncontrollable rage. "He won't be sniffing around no more—no, sir—we got us a pine box and buried him six feet under."

_What?_

_What the fuck are they talking about?_

"Out where?" Charles Bay drawls.

Jason feels his pulse jumping and straining to burst free. He clenches his arms behind him. "Quarter of a mile north from here, hehh-heh," the giggling voice informs them. "Eheh. Sully told us there's a good open field for it. Batman ain't getting free."

"D'ya kill him yourself or not, idiot—"

Pain flares, quick and wild as a night storm.

Jason yanks his wrists apart until there's a give, stretching out the line wire and pulling one hand free. Blood drips hot from Jason's ungloved fingertips, puddling onto the train-car's floor. Hunks of torn-out flesh strings from Jason's wrists.

Nasally-High glances up, calling out for Giggler when Jason swoops for him.

Jason kicks him hard to shatter Nasally-High's jaw. He lurches towards Giggler, whirling out of his grasp and stealing his pistol out of Giggler's back-pocket. The bullet goes right into Giggler's mouth, flying out, leaving a spray of moon-black gore. Jason feels his adrenaline elevating.

"Rupert Thorne is dead, chucklehead," Jason breathes, circling the other man. He flashes a menacing grin. Charles Bay scoffs and raises the crowbar, and Jason knows exactly where it's gonna go. Rhymes with King Tut.

"Then again—"

_"So was I."_

*

They hid him in the Novick Tunnel outside of Rayleigh Ferry. Jason can tell by the water-reeking sewage.

_Bottom-feeding lowlives._

He runs, following the train tracks, hearing the pebble-gravel crunch under his boots. Jason knows he should locate who is left of Rupert Thorne's boys, but something doesn't feel right. It doesn't. And it's _not_ about having a soft spot for Br—Batman.

In the open field, Jason finds what appears to be a burial dirt mound.

_Fuck._

Panic grips him, thundering in Jason's chest and giving him unexpected shivers. He claws into the dirt, pushing it around. Throwing it away. Wincing. Jason feels along a shovel half-buried there. He stands, tugging it and hauling out dirt.

Not even three feet deep, Jason's shovel bangs harshly against the pine box.

It's _real_.

Jason leaps in, prying open the smoothed and bark-white lid.

_What?_

A long, empty grave is what Jason stares down at before his head cracks forward, neck stiffening.

The shovel impacts the top of Jason's skull, giving him a swollen-red welt. Pain—Jason's dear old friend by now—howls in.

Blackness reclaims him.

*

Jason wrestles himself out of unconsciousness, discovering himself lying on his back.

Everything smells like pine.

"Let me out," he mumbles, barely registering it at first. Jason's hands press on the hard, wooden sides of the box trapped him. He can't feel his Magnum double barrel pistol on his waistband. His Red Hood helmet, once again, not with him.

Jason squints blearily through his eyemask.

His fist thuds onto the pine-wood inches from his nose.

"Let me the fuck out," Jason says loudly, hoarsely, becoming more and more aware of the situation.

The lid won't budge. _Nailed in_ —Jason's thoughts invade him, causing his body to shake violently.

It's happening again.

Jason rams another fist against the box's lid, hollering. His knees lift.

Blood splatters off Jason's injured wrist and onto his eyelid.

He punches again. Hard enough to bruise. Jason's fist punctures the wood, allowing loose, midnight-colored soil to dump onto Jason's neck and lips. It seeps in. Fast. Jason coughs, shaking his head and lifting his chin to avoid breathing in more soil.

His heart pounds rapidly.

It can't be happening again.

Jason gasps, kneeing the pine-box and sweating and screaming until it hurts. There's not enough air. He can't get out. He can't get out _this time_. It's too hot and blindingly dark. Jason's throat spasms, paralyzed, feeling like the walls tighten on him.

_Bruce!_

His voice strangles, uttering a garbled whine.

_Bruce! Please!_

He can hear himself screaming. He can hear a much younger Jason begging and weeping and thrashing in his coffin. His funeral clothes drenched in hot perspiration. Clots of grave-dirt filmed Jason's scabbed-pink mouth opening wide.

_Please help me! Help! Alfred—please!_

_I'm not dead—!_

_Bruce—!_

_BRUCE—!_

Without warning, the pine-box's lid cracks. Forced apart by someone else's hands, piece by piece.

Jason quivers in the chill of night-air, jerking upright and puking into his own lap. Nothing comes up but gulping mouthfuls of saliva.

Batman's cowl dims in a reddish light.

*

Despite what he told anyone, Jason has every second etched in his memory of crawling out of Lazarus Pit.

Being resurrected.

He wasn't himself then. Not _all_ there. Jason couldn't speak in full sentences until a month passed. Ra's al Ghul left Talia to handle a viciously snarling Jason. It took even longer to remember who he was or who Batman really was or what happened.

_BRUCE, HELP ME—!_

Jason gauze-bandaged fingers unclench,

"Fuck," he croaks out, accidentally knocking over his stack of cigarettes.

Jason rearranges them upright into a tipi, lighting their cherries and blowing off the smoke wafting under Jason's nose.

From the highest point of Wayne Manor, Jason can see the glowing cityscape in the distance and over the water. He hunches in a window, dangling a leg out, flipping his Zippo lighter off and on. Doesn't feel right, Jason thinks. His head throbs agonizingly hard.

It's _wrong_.

It feels like when he got out of the Pit.

That's why he gave Alfred a helpful hint to stay downstairs.

A growl rumbles low in Jason's throat.

_No—_

Jason swallows it down, and any lingering and savage urges, tensing his lips around his wilted cigarette. Bruce would hate him up here in the guest room, foul-mouthed, wanting to break the opaque-glass pendulum clock and smoking like a chimney.

(That's part of the appeal.)

He's tried to go over what happened. They got separated at the morgue after Bruce showed up to take back the secret sealed records from Jason's possession. He doesn't know if Bruce was captured like him, or for how long. Clearly not as long.

It doesn't mean Jason owes him.

He _doesn't_.

Not a goddamn thing.

Jason dangles his leg further out of the bedroom window, tilting his head onto the frame and ignoring as Bruce steps in.

The cigarette tipi visibly smokes between Jason's spread-open thighs.

"Alfred tell you where I was?" Jason blurts out, faced away.

It must be why. Alfred probably told Bruce himself to get his ass up here.

There's no grunt or creak of the floorboards. Bruce moves across one of the many guest bedrooms like he's part of the shadows. He made sure his Robins trained and were experts on detecting someone hiding. How to disappear themselves. Jason glances down sullenly as Bruce's hands reach for the cigarette tipi, gathering from the bottom and extinguishing the potential fire-hazard.

Jason's other knee jiggles noticeably in place.

"Yeah, well—I don't need any hand holding right now," Jason says gruffly, not expecting an answer. His eyes burn with tears. Jason's head aches like hell, but nothing's busted. Maybe a concussion. "Not unless you're looking to get yours bitten off."

"I'm not trying to coddle you, Jason," Bruce murmurs. His voice sounds more like a thunderclap. "I was hoping we could talk."

Something absurdly warm creeps over Jason.

He starts quiver-laughing, uncontrollably loud and disbelieving.

Jason's injured hands raise to his forehead bruised from the crowbar. The tip of Jason's thumb strokes the gauze-patch taped over his cleaned cut. Jason looks at him, his laughter softening into hiccups before starting all over again, Jason's mouth widening into a smile.

"You? You of all people?" Jason breathes, wheezing a little less.

He rubs the corners of his wet eyes furiously and standing on his feet. Tears roll down his smiling cheeks.

Jason wipes his mouth, puffing on his cigarette.

_"Give me a break already."_

Bruce's stoic face eases into a hint of amusement. It's fleeting and rare and that's why Jason must have it.

That's why Jason invades his space, face-to-face, kissing Bruce long and hard. He's every bit as unyielding as his Batman alias. It's part of the _appeal_. Jason's tongue flattens over the line of Bruce's mouth. "How 'bout I fuck you instead, B?" Jason pulls away to mumble this, still close enough to watch Bruce's dark eyes roaming Jason's face hungrily. "Sounds better, hmm…"

"If that's what you need from me… then you have my permission…"

Jason's smile hardens. He likes the idea of Bruce's ruddy lips messily sliding up Jason's cock, engulfing him, sucking him off. "You might just regret that," he whispers, leering, comically wagging the fingers gripping his half-cigarette at Bruce.

"I doubt it."

Heat rears up in Jason's stomach. Bruce getting defiant is one of his favorite things—it's right next to holding the flame dagger to Bruce's naked throat and imagining the slide. Smooth as Bruce's lips on him. "Oh, I'll make sure of it," Jason says with an overly dark flirtatiousness, smushing out his cigarette against the oak bedpost. He leans in to kiss Bruce again, crowding him.

Jason's fingers claw into soft, black cashmere material, pulling Bruce's sweater roughly off. Alfred taped Bruce up with gauze-bandages, and Jason burrows his finger underneath the adhesive, touching the slick-heat leaking from Bruce's wound.

Rich red blood glistens.

He pops his forefinger into his mouth, cleaning it. Jason peels the bandage open, digging his nails into the soft tissue and hearing Bruce grunt. Jason sketches Bruce's muscular jaw with the same blood-drenched nails, covering him with a thin layer.

 _"…Thanks,"_ Jason murmurs, caressing his lips over Bruce's stubble, nibbling him and licking.

*

**Author's Note:**

> Kinktober 2020 prompt(s): **Bloodplay**  
>  Whumptober 2020 prompt(s): **Panic Attacks, Phobias, Paranoia**  
>  Goretober 2020 prompt(s): **Barbed wire**


End file.
